What is it about?
Language samples offer a window into how deaf and hard of hearing preschoolers use spoken language during real interactions. We examined practical questions that could make language sampling more efficient: How long does a sample need to be? Does it matter whether the sample is collected during play or conversation? Does the child need time to “warm up” before sampling begins?
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Why is it important?
Speech-language pathologists and teachers of the deaf value language samples but often struggle to fit them into practice. In our study, samples as short as three minutes provided reliable estimates of broad spoken-language measures. This finding was true during both play and conversation. For samples of three minutes or longer, waiting for the child to “warm up” did not make the measures more reliable. These findings support a shorter, more flexible approach to language sampling. Future research should examine how long samples need to be when clinicians want to look at specific language skills or track changes over time.
Perspectives
As practicing speech-language pathologists, our team saw colleagues make a real effort to use language samples despite the demands of a busy workday. Sometimes that meant staying after school to transcribe and analyze samples. Other times, samples were put off because there simply was not enough time. Those experiences motivated the practical questions at the center of this study.
Meganne Muir
Vanderbilt University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Efficient Language Sampling for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children: Evaluating Reliability Across Length, Timing, and Context, Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, July 2026, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2026_jslhr-25-00696.
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